I don’t mean that Velen has literal skeletons in his closet. I would be really surprised if he did. He’s one of the holy preachy types and though those can quite often be rather dark under all that cover of light, Velen is not this kind of guy. He’s the kind of fool who actually believes in the stuff he preaches. What I meant was that all of us have their secrets or things they’d rather forget about. As I always say, nobody is incorruptible. Not even Velen. Even he does some questionable things. Don’t believe me? Well, imagine this: there’s a bunch of draenei out there in space who are known as thieves and scoundrels, and who feel offended by being called draenei. Where did those come from? Here’s where.

I’m always reluctant to give credit to people, especially Lunk, but when they deserve it, I do it (and then complain about it). So as you might or might not know I was looking for a while for a way to expand my facilities. Namely, I wanted to build a new research facility – one far away from the prying eyes of Alliance and Horde, one that could research whatever I wanted without oversight from anyone. Two ideas crossed my mind, an island somewhere in the Great Sea, or some abandoned world out there in the Nether. While I was still waiting for the adventurers to go to Draenor to boost my sales, Lunk stumbled upon an island not far away from the Darkmoon Island. An unpopulated, isolated, dark island – the perfect place for me and my future research facility.

Everyone wants to be a god of death it seems. Why is that so? I don’t know about others, but I much prefer life. When you’re dead, you can’t taste things, or feel the soft, new nest underneath you. When you’re dead, you can’t expand your knowledge. So why there’s so many gods of death? I mean, think about it. Arthas, the Lich King, presented himself to the vrykul as a “death god”. His “best friend” Yogg-Saron of course had to suffix his already scary title of “Old God” with “of Death”. Now, DEATHwing decided his name doesn’t have enough death in it so he proclaimed himself an Aspect of DEATH. Even the squawking quilboar had an organization called “Death’s Head”. It seems that if you want to sound scary you have to put as much DEATH as possible in your names and titles. Coming soon: deathy death death of death (and death). And then there are these Xa’tac.

For the longest time, I’ve been stuck on this groundling world with no way out, nor any way to meet more of my kind. All I had were these unfamiliar, strange people and too often I had to even pretend I’m something different. And now I’m in luck, because Krasha managed to open a portal to another world, one more familiar to me. I mean, it was just gnomes at first, and I don’t really like them (who does?) but it was the Gnadra Confederacy. Finally, I was back in a familiar territory. I would run back to my homeworld using this opportunity but I actually managed to get a well-paying job here, with the opportunity to use the knowledge that would have been useless on Wawhira, but to my present employer it’s gold. I’m back out of “miraculous trader” and into “interstellar guide”!

Character: Captain Matus T. Manks of the Venture, boldly going where no gnome has gone before
The day began very usually. We read through the “nightly” shift’s mining reports and prepared for our work the following day. I must say living on a world tidally-locked to its sun can wreck one’s sense of time quite well. This red dwarf is stuck in eternal sunset and no matter when you wake up or when you go to sleep, you will always see the same amount of light, and our bodies are set to identify how tired they are by the amount of light in the environment. After spending a month on the duty of protecting the grav miners here, I find myself lying awake in bed for the whole time designated as “night” on our timetables, and then feeling completely tired for the whole “day”. But that was by far the least odd thing that happened to me yesterday.

I really wish my debtors would stop winding up dead or otherwise incapacitated. I mean, technically the last one was a set up with a body procured by a lich, but this time it really happened. I sent a few people to track down a Forsaken who owed me some gold. I knew he was spending time around the Bloodmoon Isle in Grizzly Hills, researching the worgen curse, probably on behalf of the Banshee Queen, although he’d never officially admit it. So I got a few people together and sent them through a portal to Grizzly Hills and told them to look for that Forsaken. After interrogating some starving trolls, they learned he hid in a nearby crypt (what is with Forsaken and crypts?) and went in to investigate. Lo and behold, the Forsaken was dead and had no gold on him. But this is where the fun part starts.